“Harry Truman was President, gas cost 15 cents a gallon, the transistor was invented, and internationally renowned surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey was publishing articles on the US Army’s World War II experience with battle injuries, military surgery, and the use of streptomycin therapy. Citations to these and more than 60,000 other articles indexed in the 1947 Current List of Medical Literature are now available in the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed database”
By extending its backward reach, PubMed now includes over 20 million citations. More important than that number, however, is the fact that many modern questions are best answered by consulting both recent and older literature.
You should also know that many publishers have added even older citations to PubMed. Some key public health journals are in PubMed back to Volume 1:
- American Journal of Public Health: Volume 1, 1911
- Public Health Reports: Volume 1, 1878
- American Journal of Epidemiology: Volume 1, 1921
(Please note: these journals underwent several title changes)
For more details on this PubMed news, see this NLM Announcement.